FREEMAN TOWNSHIP — On his family’s frozen pond Sunday morning, Austin Thorndike revved up his chainsaw and made the first cut. The water sprayed over his head, but Thorndike didn’t flinch as he made three more deep cuts into the ice, forming a square. He grabbed his ice tongs, wedged them into the water and pulled out a cube weighing 50 pounds and striped with thick translucent layers. Over 3 tons of ice were harvested Sunday by Jewish community leaders, families and a crew of Colby College students. It’s the second year that Beth Israel Synagogue has harvested ice for their mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, used for ritual immersion during conversion ceremonies, before weddings or in times of transition. While immersions happen frequently, the Waterville synagogue unique in how it harvests ice from a frozen pond for mikvah water, said Rabbi Rachel Isaacs. “It’s not something that most people do,” Isaacs said. “It’s just nice to do something Jewish that is physical and related to nature and outdoors, and it required a lot of teamwork and muscle and that brought people together.” The cubes were pushed, carried and sledded across the snow as students loaded them into Thorndike’s trailer for the hour-long drive to Waterville. At the synagogue the ice would find its place, a limestone filtering space that allows water to flow into the adjoining mikvah pool. Beth Israel opened their mikvah last March. There is only one other mikvah in Maine, making the synagogue a destination for people on the precipice of important Jewish moments like conversion or marriage. The catch is that the mikvah requires natural flowing water. There’s no naturally occurring water under the synagogue, and leaders had concerns that using pipes to collect rainwater would cause them to freeze. By Jewish law, standing water can’t be transported from another location and fed into the bath, but there’s no rule against transporting ice, said Melanie Weiss, executive director of Beth Israel. “You’re not allowed to transport Mayyim Hayyim, living water, for purpose of the mikvah,” Weiss said. “Lake ice is not water, but it was water and it will be water again.” Thorndike, who lives in Avon, converted to Judaism at the start of the pandemic. His only option for ritual immersion was a lake. The opening of Beth Israel’s mikvah gave people another option, where the ice Thorndike harvests keeps the bath full all year long. It’s rewarding to give other people a space to convert, Thorndike said. “It’s nice that they can have a nice, comfortable way to convert to Judaism,” Thorndike said. “Because honestly, even in July and August the water in Maine is not nice, and I did it in October, so it was kind of like Navy SEAL training in the water. But it’s good that we (harvested the ice) — there’s not been a mikvah in Maine in a long time, so it’s pretty cool to be part of that.” Ice harvesting has long been a part of Maine’s culture. Before refrigerators, ice was the state’s biggest export. Beth Israel originally tried to contract with a company in Bristol to order ice for the mikvah last year, but the volume was too big and the ice too unreliable, Weiss said. “We started exploring other options,” Weiss said. “And Austin said, ‘I know how to cut ice, and I would love to do this for the synagogue.’ It was so much fun that we decided that this would be a thing we did.” Volunteers from Colby Hillel, men’s rugby team and the Colby Woodsmen, a competitive timbersports team, were rounded up to load the ice and deliver it safely to the mikvah, Weiss said. “They’re going to do the schlepping,” Weiss said. Connor Ransom, captain of the Woodsmen, who compete in logging-skills events, said the ice harvest is a good way for the team to give back to the community while doing what they love: cutting and hauling heavy things. “It’s awesome to be able to do some volunteer work, and great to get people on the team out here to do that,” Ransom said. “It’s a lot of fun when we’re able to help do good for the town.” Since opening, the mikvah has hosted around 50 immersions from people from across the state, Isaacs said. Five synagogues and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine pay Beth Israel so that their congregants can use the mikvah. While mikvahs were historically used before marriage, before becoming Jewish and before having sex, the modern day use of the ritual bath has expanded to include all types of new beginnings, including gender transitions, graduations and bar and bat mitzvahs. Noting and celebrating the passage of time is a big part of the religion, Isaacs said. “A big part of Judaism is being able to say that certain time begins and other time ends,” Isaacs said. “And mikvah is a way to say: One era has ended, and another has begun. It’s great in rural America because conversion is a feature of small-town and rural American Jewish life, so we need to do a lot of conversions.” Thorndike’s talent for ice cutting and access to the frozen pond serves as a bridge for other people looking to convert or start anew, Weiss said. “He’s the only one who can do this for us,” Weiss said. “It’s a very special role to have.”